Second place is...

The first loser.  But I suppose that's what I get for riding my bike twice a week and thinking I can ride fast!  The course in Upper Freehold was actually pretty interesting, much more up and down, some pretty good little turns where I am sure I lost time, and the weather turned out better than I thought it would, not a drop of rain the whole time.  I actually warmed up on the road which I prefer so immensely to riding on the trainer so that was a big plus.

I was hoping to start at the end of the 4-5 guys but it appears that the ranked starting order only counts for NJ guys maybe so I was starting in the middle and caught a few guys right away, maybe a minute or two in.  Then I took the first major right turn and it got lonely pretty quickly.


I'd actually heard several stories of going off course so I was nervous about it and after riding for what felt like quite a while and not seeing a single rider or marshal, I was getting nervous but it turns out I was on course.  The time I sat up to look behind me just to see if someone was coming probably cost me a second or two (and losing by nine I suppose I regret it, but...)  The other part that was extra fun was having to squeeze by two cars on the right who had slowed down behind a guy in front of me (who had a sweet HUGE beard, extra props for having that amongst the "aero" crowd) and hoping they didn't decide to creep over to the right and push me into the bushes.  This of course distracted me from shifting and I ended up going up the hill in the 55x18 or so, not really what I'd recommend.

In the end, I lost by nine seconds to a guy that I beat by forty seconds in the TT at LBI despite taking a wrong turn and all that.  So I figure it has to be partly due to the fact that I had ridden nearly every day prior to that race since I was on Spring Break and had time, and this week I barely rode at all because we have eighteen track meets in the span of two weeks.



But I think the next race will probably be the Philadelphia Amateur TT, hopefully a chance to pick up some PA BAR points since it is now looking like I won't really factor into that competition since I haven't been in a BAR race yet!